Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi previously had one claim to fame – he was the country’s first president elected through a democratic process. As of this afternoon, he now has another nail to hang his hat on – he was Egypt’s first democratically-elected president to be ousted from office. In a television address earlier today, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared that Morsi is no longer in charge of the country, as he has been effectively overthrown in the wake of the incredible protests that have filled the streets of Cairo for the past several days.

The announcement by the army follows the ultimatum that it issued to Morsi to either reach an agreement with the demands of the millions of people calling for his resignation or be removed from office. Despite the pressure from the protesting party, the Tamarod, Morsi remained steadfast that he was the elected leader of Egypt. Today, “was” is the key word.

Morsi is now in hiding as the protesters and his opposition celebrate their victory, while Egypt’s government will be controlled by the head of the constitutional court until new elections can be held, according to Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, a commentator on Arab affairs, whose Twitter feed has served as a good source of both the news and emotions coming from Cairo today.

We are constitutionally guaranteed to be able to do that, but federal and local governments have organized themselves to quickly put down planned or unplanned public protests. I am not a right winger, or a left winger, and absolutely not a conspiracy nut FWIW. More people should have been angry in the early 2000s when the Feds started errr “investigating potential terrorist threats” (under the new Homeland Security laws) on people forming protest groups around the country to protest said laws. All the spying-on-citizen BS has stemmed from that time.

The Muslim Brotherhood is out. Part of the reason why they got elected in the first place was because the party was illegal under Mubarak’s rule. The people of Egypt wanted something fresh that also respected their religion. And then in the elections, it was them against a member of the Mubarak regime – the election was close, but the result wasn’t a surprise because a lot of people were very hesitant about electing someone who played a part in the very misery they were revolting against.

The problem was that as soon as Morsi was elected, he went off the rails. The economy was not good before, but now it’s shit. Tourism, one of Egypt’s biggest businesses, has sunk. It’s a business that relies on tolerance of foreigners, but the MB didn’t care. They started encouraging men to harass tourists at the major sites, to assault women in broad daylight, and to fight the Coptics and Muslims that were opposed to the MB. The thing is, the people of Egypt are some of the most tolerant in the Middle East and once the Brotherhood started to have their way, they realized that not just tyranny, but religious tyranny, was being thrust upon them.

Anyway, that’s my rant. Things can fall apart again in Egypt, but at least the people have seen Morsi for who he is and took action against both him and the Muslim Brotherhood. Now there’s a decent chance things will get better, and it can without the MB in charge.

Yeah, no. The dude was elected and promptly went batshit. The reason we talk about John Stewart is because a buddy of his that basically does the Daily Show in Egypt, who was a huge supporter of Morsi during his campaign was jailed for months for making light of the Morsi after he turned all GWB on them.

It’s obviously more complicated than that, but the military aren’t taking over, and they at least state that they have paved the way for new elections to be held.

Can you, UPROXX, provide detail as to why this guy/asshole was ousted? UPROXX does a good job of telling me shitty current events in once sentence. I do not want to read a long ass article about history or relevance…just one sentence that says “why he was elected and then he why was ousted”

Basically he was elected because his main opposition was a member of Mubarak’s party, and he was ousted because immediately after taking over he went off the rails, his party wrote a bunch of religious morality stuff into their constitution, started jailing people that spoke against him, and let their economy/tourism industry go down the toilet.

Strange as it seems, having the military more or less in charge is probably the best chance this place has of *not* reverting to the 8th century. Let the Islamists run things and they’ll make Saudi Arabia look like Vegas.